Talk:The Tortoise and the Birds

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I'm completely understand why you say the Frog and A Pair of Geese article is non-notable school project. Actually that is right, but with this article included in Wikipedia, it can improved the reader knowledge about the Frog and A Pair of Geese story. This story is a common story that everyone loved and usually a good story to tell to a children because of it's moral value. I think this article can improve the reader knowledge too, especially if they want to know more about one of the Chinese Fable story. Please consider my objection to deletion. I want to hear from you soon, hopefully you're understand.

Thank you. Ivan Akira (talk) 10:41, 5 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have to concur that this looks like a non-notable school project, and doesn't belong on Wikipedia. You should at least have been able to point at a published version of the fable? The version you present here seems to be based on a story out of the 1000-year-old Panchatantra, called the tortoise and the geese. The Panchatantra, Aesop's fables, etc are notable collections of published fables, but this version isn't. --Bazzargh (talk) 14:21, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• I agree. If the article is re-written as a proper description of the fable, then it will probably be OK. It should be in English only and should not contain any names, especially not Ivan Akira! (Ivan you get the credit in the edit history not in the text of the article.) It will need some good references and probably a different title since Google has never heard of this title. -- RHaworth (Talk | contribs) 16:51, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

BTW if you decide to write up an article on the fable (in the style of The Tortoise and the Hare), here's some info that may be useful to you. The tortoise version was first published in English in 1570. A scanned 1888 reprint of this edition, with a useful introduction, appears here. There are two versions of the story in this book, the first one taking the form of a Buddhist Jataka, provided as an appendix for comparison the the Panchatantra translation. You can find the second version on p170, and this fantastic engraving of the story is on p174. The phenomenon of birds dropping tortoises is observed in nature - see the death of Aeschylus for a famous example --Bazzargh (talk) 18:44, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I already edited almost every section of this article, please review it and give comments, are there any mistake or there are still not fulfill the Wikipedia article requirements. Thanks. Ivan Akira (talk) 22:11, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• The title should be The Talkative Tortoise or The Tortoise and the Geese. The text copied from bharatadesam is probably a copyvio and must be omitted. On the other hand if the text at archive.org dates from 1888 or earlier then you can probably safely include it. The image and the frog versions must all be omitted because they are something you have made up. The non-English versions must also be omitted because this is the en: Wikipedia. -- RHaworth (Talk | contribs) 22:32, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree with RHaworth on pretty much everything above, apart from one thing - the English version of the frog story can stay, but only if that is a summary or translation of a published work. Please fix the rest of the article as he suggests! I know that the frog version isn't your invention - eg see this Mongolian tale on the BBC website [1] dates to 2001. That site's user-edited like wikipedia though, so it doesn't qualify as a reliable source - but you mention it if a reliable, published source also exists. Since you know the frog story, it probably appears in some children's book at your school (in English or not). If you can find a published version, a reference to that would be enough to keep some of the frog story. Fables are often changed by the storyteller, a frog version would be useful in the article to illustrate this --Bazzargh (talk) 23:44, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please read the article again, and state the another mistakes again. Thank you. Ivan Akira (talk) 08:09, 5 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ivan, you don't need to talk to myself and RHaworth directly, editors usually place pages they're working on on their watchlist (see the 'watch' tab at the top of this page). Clicking on 'my watchlist' shows us when pages we're interested in have changed.

Back to the content - its still missing a ref for the frog version of the story, but I found one tracing down the Mongolian connection. I've incorporated it into a partially-rewritten version of the page you can find here: User:Bazzargh/The_Tortoise_and_the_Geese. We've been trying to nudge you towards an encyclopedic style for the article and to dig out references, if you compare what I've written so far to your own version you should see what we're aiming for (or at least what I was aiming for!). RHaworth, would you agree to a change from {{prod}} to {{underconstruction}} at this point?

Unfortunately this version drops pretty much all of your original. I'm still keen to know if you have a reference for the Chinese version? I think your book cover illustration can be used beside the frog version of the story, if we title it appropriately (identifying it as a school project rather than a published work). I'd like to incorporate the 1570 engraving too, further up the article. --Bazzargh (talk) 16:33, 5 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm agree with you Bazzargh, thank you very much about helping me with this article. For the version of yours, I already review it. I think that version (even completely different with my writing) is a good writing. If you can help me to incorporate my work to yours, I will be delightful. About {{underconstruction}} tag, it up to RHaworth decision, I'm in no charge here. For the chinese version, unfrotunately there is no references availble on the net (maybe?) at least until now (maybe the Chinese version is published in printed version?). Unfortunately, the Chinese version that I had ever added to the article was my group translation, so there is no references on that. Ivan Akira (talk) 08:27, 6 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Of this article about a century old book.
ThisMunkey (talk) 14:19, 5 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'll be dropping in the version I mentioned above (User:Bazzargh/The_Tortoise_and_the_Geese) in the next 24h, (*ahem* when I'm sober*ahem*). I thought it worth switching off prod since clearly the content is about to change massively, and the deadline is approaching; I'm happy for anyone to dive in and grab from my page anytime now if they're keen. I can't get a clear license for the illustrations (in any version, even for 430-year-old engravings - UK copyright law is a joke) so I'm sticking with Ivan's drawing for the story. I've found almost all the original versions referred to by Benfay and Jacobs but if anyone has a line on an unabridged copy of Abstemius I'd be interested to see it (the abridged versions drop half the stories, the ones that were censored sound worth a read) --Bazzargh (talk) 02:00, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It is simply illogical to put a section titled 'Origins' at the END of the article. The article needs rewriting from this point of view. Both the Buddha (to whom the Jataka story about the talkative tortoise is credited) and Aesop, to whom other variants are credited, were contemporaries. It would therefore be sensible to retitle the article 'The Tortoise and the Birds', since so many are involved, and to give the versions equal treatment. There is no direction to this article from Aesop's Fables and a rewriting that gives greater weight to this equally valid Western source is therefore overdue.Mzilikazi1939 (talk) 17:28, 4 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have now rewritten the article. Here are some of the reasons for the changes.

• 1. Jataka stories traditionally predate the Panchatantra and therefore the tale of the talkative tortoise should be mentioned first.
• 2. The Panchatantra is a speculatively reconstructed text; no reference to it can be considered valid unless the provenance of the text is specified.
• 3. Too much reliance is put on the work of Joseph Jacobs. This author arbitrarily rewrote the fables of Aesop without explaining a rationale for his versions. As a scholar, his work is often speculative and has not been verified by his peers.
• 4. Many of the authors referenced are from the 19th century and one wonders whether what they said has since been verified. One also wonders whether those works cited have actually been checked. A word-search for schildkroete (tortoise) in the work by Theodor Benfey gives no results.
• 5. Hebrew versions of the fable would be interesting. They certainly did not exist at the time the Torah commentaries - according to Jacobs' own research. Unless we have stronger grounds than what Jacobs and Benfey (who doesn't seem to know of the fable) say that Derenbourg says, no safe conclusions can be drawn.
• 6. Since scholars (since Jacobs and Benfey) have noted a similarity with the Babrius version of Aesop's fable, it should not have been relegated to a bullet point at the end but given equality of consideration.
• 7. There is also a West African variant which must soon be added.
• 8. Many of the illustrations are faded or otherwise unsatisfactory and have needed replacing.
• 9. Not even all the Indian versions agreed that it was geese with which the tortoise had become friendly. Given that other birds are mentioned in the Aesop versions, and the more generalised title by which these stories go, it makes more sense to redirect the article to "The tortoise and the birds" from now on. Mzilikazi1939 (talk) 18:56, 5 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Replying long after it matters, since I just noticed this, and your edits are fine - but yes I did check Benfey, who certainly did know of this fable. The citation I gave pointed to the exact section in his book - 84 - which begins Die erste der eingeschobenen Fabeln ist die 13. unserer Uebersetzung die unfolgsame Schildkröte...Im Sanskrit sind die Vögel hansa; "Schwäne oder Flamingos oder Ganse", im südlichen (Dubois) Pantschatantra "Adler" (The first of the inserted fables is the 13th of our translation "The Disobedient Tortoise"... In Sanskrit the birds are Hamsa; "Swans or Flamingos or Geese", in the southern (Dubois) Panchatantra "Eagle"). Perhaps you missed this by searching for the anglicised schildkroete? Here's a link with the correct search: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0ukUAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=Schildkr%C3%B6te&f=false Bazzargh (talk) 12:45, 10 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Bazzargh. Since 2010 I have discovered that the person whose work covers Aesop (and analogues) most comprehensively is Adrados' History of the Graeco-Roman Fable. Scholarship has moved decisively forward since the middle of the 19th century. Incidentally, I knew Hamsa was either a goose or a swan but have NEVER heard it could also apply to a flamingo. I just checked it in Pali too: goose, swan, sometimes other kinds of water bird...but a flamingo is different, it's a wader. Mzilikazi1939 (talk) 16:49, 10 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]